For thousands of years, tea has been an integral part of Eastern culture, celebrated for its ability to promote good health, happiness, and wisdom. But it’s not just in the East where tea reigns supreme. In the West, researchers are discovering the many health benefits it has, and it’s quickly becoming the go-to alternative to coffee for millions of people around the world.
Whether you run a restaurant, tea shop, or bed and breakfast, knowing how to serve the perfect cup of tea is essential to creating an unforgettable experience for your guests. In this article, I’ll show you how to do just that.
Teapots: The Best Way to Serve This Popular Drink
A proper cup of tea calls for loose-leaf tea in a beautiful teacup. If you have a business that serves hot beverages to customers, you can purchase bulk teapots online and get everyone on board with experiencing the full health benefits that freshly brewed tea offers.
One of the main advantages I love about teapots is that the tea stays hot longer, keeps it fresh and the serving itself is much more pleasurable this way. Safety is also important when serving hot beverages. Because of the way teapots are made, you can serve the hot beverage without risking a nasty burn on your hand. Also, you can buy teapots that are lightweight, which makes them easy to carry.
Finally, using bulk teapots can add an element of sophistication and elegance to a restaurant’s dining experience, making it more memorable for customers. All in all, serving tea in teapots is a small but important detail that can have a significant impact on the overall experience of customers.
And remember that if you’re serving the highly-desired loose-leaf tea, you’ll need to strain it before putting it in your guest’s cup. Advise the customers to never use a spoon to squeeze the tea bags – this is going to make the tea taste much more bitter than the actual flavour.
Pair It With Food Bites
Most of the time, people order afternoon tea or “low tea” served in teapots between 3 and 5 p.m. That said, serving it with some food is a nice touch that will make guests feel appreciated.
You can serve the tea with both sweet and savoury snacks. These should be small enough to eat in one bite, so your guests can nibble on them as they drink their tea. For instance, you can serve small sandwiches, scones, and other baked goods. You might want to serve a variety of small sweet scones with clotted cream, jam, or citrus curds. Small pastries and baked goods like shortbread, macarons, and tea cake can be bought or made.
Important Tips for a Great Cuppa
Tea seems easy enough, doesn’t it? Take a certain amount of dried leaves, soak them in water, strain the water, and drink. But in reality, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Because if it were that easy, why do we find that sometimes it tastes bitter or off (at home, in restaurants, cafes, etc.) and can only be saved by adding agave, sugar, or even milk or cream?
Unfortunately, adding extra sweetness or milk changes the way the tea tastes and makes it a letdown to drink. After all, tea is an elegant drink that tastes best and has the most health benefits when it’s in its natural state.
1. Prepare the Water
Do you boil water and pour it over the leaves? Or should you just add the leaves to the water and let them steep? The truth is that each type of tea is processed differently, with white being the least processed and black tea being the most.
As tea is dried and human-handled or even aged, its flavour becomes more distinct and hearty, and it can hold up better when boiled water is added to it.
But if you pour boiling water over a delicate mixture like white tea, the leaves will fall apart too quickly and the drink will start to taste bitter and lose its character. Worse, the fragile leaves will get so beat up that the powerful health and relaxation benefits will be lost.
Whatever tea you’re making, always follow the directions on the package. For instance, most black teas need to be made with water that has been brought to a boil in a teapot. You first need to rinse the teapot with hot water and put the tea leaves or bags in it. Then you will fill the teapot with hot water and let the tea sit for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on how strong you like it. The next step is to stir the tea and pour it into a teapot.
2. Find the Right Mix
When it comes to drinking this warm beverage, less is often more. But I don’t mean fewer tea leaves; I mean less stuff to add once it’s done.
Tea is known for its therapeutic properties and antioxidants, but as I mentioned, adding milk or other ingredients like sugar could reduce the benefits of your tea because antioxidants bind to molecules of milk or sugar. They can also be a sneaky way to get more calories than you want.
3. Everything Is About Timing
Time can make all the difference when it comes to making your favourite tea. Teas can taste bitter if you use too hot of water or steep them for too long. The time when you serve it to your guests is just as important as everything else.
